Olympic gold and proud parents
Scott opened Monday celebrating Team GB’s best ever Winter Olympics weekend. More gold medals than ever before at a Winter Games, all in one weekend. Charlotte Banks and Hugh Nightingale got gold in the snowboarding cross. Nobody was loving it more than Hugh’s mum and dad. In a clip that went viral overnight, the two of them are bickering on camera about whose son he is. Dad: “Our son.” Mum: “Our son. I did have something to do with it.” Then when nappies get mentioned: “I’ve changed his nappy.” Mum: “And so did I!” Scott kept playing it throughout the show. “Classic embarrassing mum and dad behaviour. We’ve all seen it at school sports day. But we love the pride from the Nightingales.”
Matt Weston and Tabitha Stoker also got gold in the mixed team skeleton event. Matt had already won individual gold earlier in the Games, making him the first British athlete to win two golds at a single Winter Olympics. Hugh Nightingale would be on with Vernon later in the show at 10:10.
Romantic Valentine’s Days, or: IKEA and service station Top Trumps
Scott, Ellie, and Stefan (standing in for Tina who’s on half term — check your local school rota to know when Tina’s off) compared Valentine’s Days. Ellie and her partner fancied fish and chips but decided it was a bit expensive to go to the chippy, so they bought it in. Then while it was in the oven they played service station Top Trumps. “Nothing says romance like Watford Gap Services 6.”
Stefan flat-packed some IKEA furniture and was then told to leave the house because his wife had her mates coming round. On Valentine’s Day. Scott had half an hour at the driving range, which wasn’t the end of the world but not very romantic. Sam had got him a card but it was in the car and he hadn’t written it yet.
Voice notes came in. Emma in Downley: “I had a ham and cheese toasty and my husband had leftover chow mein from the night before and we ate at different times. Not together.” A man married 28 years: his wife went to watch Mumford & Sons at the Bath Forum with a girlfriend, he watched rugby at the local pub. Didn’t spend it together. Sue in Saxmundham in Suffolk: “Our Valentines were spent raving in Norwich. 33 years together, no romance in sight, but we did end the evening with a dirty doner kebab.” At least they ate together.
One listener got up early on Saturday, opened each other’s cards, and then his wife jumped in the car and drove 200 miles up the road to get her nails done for a holiday they’re going on Thursday. Then she came home Sunday. Scott asked Ellie: “Did you do that thing again at the weekend where you drive four hours to get your hair done?” Ellie confirmed. She drove 200 miles to see her hairdresser. “I can’t break up with my hairdresser.” Scott: “I’ve got to have mine done in London as well. I can’t break up with my hairdresser. Can we not just find you someone a bit nearer?” Ellie: “No one knows my hair like her.” They’re both a year in now living where they live. Time to sort it out.
Top of the Pops 1999
Stefan had spotted Scott on TV Friday night on the BBC4 Top of the Pops repeats. They’ve finally reached the late 90s episodes that Scott presented. That episode hadn’t been on TV since it first aired in 1999. “I thought you were brilliant but you just look like a child,” Stefan said. Scott was very young. He didn’t write the script. At least he wore black because it could have been so much worse. “It was definitely the late 90s but the outfit wasn’t the worst. Although warning: there is a shirt with dragons coming soon. And I think there’s a flame one as well.”
The main comment on Scott’s Instagram: “Why were 12-year-olds allowed to present TV?” He did look like the YTS boy. (If you don’t know what YTS is, welcome to Radio 2.) The best part was getting to drive the Flat Eric car around Elstree Studios for three hours for a segment. He’d never driven before. Manual, without power-assisted steering. He thinks he did quite well considering he was still at school.
Scott played his old intro to Bewitched from that 1999 episode. “Next up, four lasses who celebrated St Patrick’s Day in New York. Currently wooing and charming them over there like they did over here. It’s Bewitched! [points] Here they are on Top of the Pops!” So much pointing. Walking backwards into a crowd. Props everywhere. “Why am I walking backwards? I’m walking backwards into a crowd that I hope will get out of the way.”
The main event: Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann spent the hour with Scott. The man who made Romeo and Juliet, Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom, The Great Gatsby, and most recently Elvis with Austin Butler. He’s now made his first documentary: Epic, a.k.a. Elvis Presley in concert. Scott admitted upfront: never really been a massive fan of Elvis. Obviously aware of how huge he is and the mark he left, but this film made him see Elvis differently. “It’s 90 minutes of pure gold — Elvis, stuff I have never seen from his Vegas shows, his rehearsals, and even him talking about himself and his career, which is super rare.”
The Kansas salt mines
Baz was making the Elvis movie and someone told him there were mythical reels of footage from Elvis in Vegas that had gone lost. He had the resources to pay someone to go into the actual salt mines in Kansas City where MGM kept all their stuff. “I’m suddenly getting this video of these creaky doors being kicked open, dust, and it’s a bit like Raiders of the Lost Ark. And boom, there are 68 boxes of never-before-used negative. There’s no sound.” He was able to crawl back the sound. Over two years he worked with Peter Jackson to print and bring it back to its highest possible quality.
The amazing thing: a 50-minute tape of Elvis, unguarded, recorded, just speaking about his life. “We thought, why don’t we get out of the way and let Elvis sing and tell his story as if he comes to you in a dreamscape.” This is the story Elvis never got to tell.
The quality: 35mm anamorphic. It looks like it could have been filmed last week. Some kids have said it can’t look that good unless it’s AI or a visual effect. “There’s not a frame of AI in this film. The only visual effect is the effect Elvis has on his audience.”
The negatives were crumbling, all mixed up, some stolen. Once the rumour got out that Baz had found them, his feeds were full of “release the footage, release the footage.” He and his creative editor partner Jono Redman decided they couldn’t put them back in the salt mines. The sound was mag tape. Some of the orchestration was damaged so they had to re-sweeten that. The Sweet Inspirations (the gospel group) — most of that survived but some they had to sweeten. “It made it more like a dreamscape.”
Elvis and the world tour that never happened
There’s a moment in the film where Elvis says he wants to travel, he wants to go to Japan, he wants to go to England. “I’ve never been outside this country except in the service.” Tragically he never went on a world tour. “This is the Elvis world tour Elvis never had,” Baz said, wearing a t-shirt that said exactly that. “It does feel like you’re watching the best Elvis concert ever.”
Why did he never leave the US? Jerry Schilling was his best friend. Every time they’d organize a world tour there’d be some reason the Colonel (Elvis’s manager) would come up with. Security, security, security. Elvis would lose his mind. There was an Australia tour with millions of dollars offered. The Colonel sent the gold Cadillac instead. Eventually Elvis just needed the cash and lost the will.
The Vegas show was intended to be a few weeks. It ended up being seven years, until he died. He thought he was going to do it and then go around the world. The Colonel had him do 15 cities in 15 days instead. Then again. Then again. “To me he’s a bit like a bird hitting a glass wall. He can’t understand why he can’t go on. I really believe if he went on that world tour it would have given him new energy under his wings. He would have flown more and it would have kept him from that decline we saw.”
Who Elvis really was
Scott said the amount of gospel in the film is a lot. Baz confirmed: “That’s his place, that’s his jam.” After a concert he’d go upstairs with the Sweet Inspirations and the singers and sing gospel till the sun came up. The biggest revelation from the film: how funny Elvis is. Really funny. He sends himself up.
Baz’s theory, from talking to Sam Bell (one of the young kids Elvis ran around with): Elvis was living in one of the few white houses in the black community. Sam’s grandparents had a nice house and a good vegetable patch. No white person ever called them sir or ma’am. They adored Elvis. “I think Elvis never lost this invulnerability, humility. But then he turns into this kind of Greek god. He’s the first ever teenage phenomenon. He’s the most famous young man on the planet. Then all of a sudden within weeks his mother dies. I think it leads to this enormous big hole in his heart.”
On stage you feel like he’s your friend. He was doing three shows a day sometimes. The band never knew what he was going to do. They had to keep their eyes glued to him because he might just turn around and say “okay, bridge” and suddenly take a Simon and Garfunkel song and turn it into an amazing powerhouse gospel thing. He never had a stylist. He came up with the Elvis look. In rehearsals you can see him sing all the lines, his whole body conducts the orchestra, conducts the band.
Scott: “I’m a new fan because of this film.” Baz: “That’s a beautiful thing to hear.”
Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)
The show played the full Sunscreen track. Scott said it’s a Radio 2 anthem — everyone knows the words, the show gets hundreds and thousands of messages every time they play it. People saying “that’s exactly what I needed to hear this morning.”
Baz told the story of how it came to be. He was learning to produce music after Romeo and Juliet, before Moulin Rouge. He found a speech by Kurt Vonnegut (who he was going to work with) on this thing called the World Wide Web which had just been invented. He thought they had to make a song out of it. Used vocals from Romeo and Juliet. The song was 40 minutes long. Made a charity album. Went to the local radio station. “They said ‘we are not going to play that.’ I was like ‘oh that didn’t go well.’ It was ABC, not the BBC.”
He went down to the arts show at 1am and convinced them to play it. Literally like in a movie: there’s a guy tapping on the glass. The phone boards are lighting up. By the end of the week it was the number one song in Australia. Same thing happened in the States on the university channel. By the time he got to England three weeks later it came into the charts at number one.
The guy doing the vocals: not Lee Scratch Perry. A voice impersonator called Lee Perry. People think it’s Baz. They come up and say “gee you sound different.” Baz said “I want you to make it sound like Kurt Vonnegut.” He recorded class of 97, 98, 99 thinking by the year 2000 no one will care. He ran out of the beginnings.
About a year later he was on tour for a film in Texas. His credit card was declined at a hotel. The guy rang security and said “does he look like a rock star?” Security: “I don’t know, not really.” Guy: “Did you record a song called Sunscreen?” Baz: “Yeah that’s for me.” Guy: “Okay you’re okay then.”
Remaking Sunscreen for 2026
Faithful listener Helen called in. She was in tears. She’s been listening to it frequently. “I honestly feel like you gave us a cheat sheet for life. Back then before I had a fully embedded frontal lobe it was a little wasted on me. But I feel like it’s my mission in life. I think we should be playing it in schools and I think we need to make the younger generations listen, actually listen to this song. Because it is just so powerful and it doesn’t matter how many times I listen to it, every time I hear it I will connect with a different lyric. I’m physically moved by it. Every pore on my body is erect. It’s like I’m like a cat.”
Baz had an idea, exclusively on the show. Send the tracks to young people. They know Beats. Take it, do a remix. Find a way to get it to him. “If we think it pumps, if we think it’s cool, we’ll play it, we’ll release it, and we’ll get it out there because it needs a fresh take.”
What should go in for 2026? Helen: don’t chuck out your skinny jeans, they will come back in fashion (Scott learned this the hard way, had to buy them all back on Vinted). And: look up from your smartphones, real life is happening in front of you. Baz: “Young people are moving away from that now. My daughter’s 21 and she had to put parental controls on my wife’s phone because she doom scrolls herself to death. My 21-year-old’s going ‘look mum you just gotta live you know?'” Helen: “There’s a lyric: don’t doomscroll yourself to death.”
Texts came in with more suggestions: tell someone you love them every day; speak to old people, they know cool things; speak to young people, they know cool things; don’t spend your life in front of a screen, you are center stage; everything happens for a reason even if it’s not clear at the time; don’t worry about losing your hair, if it wants to go let it, some of the most important men in history have been bald. (Scott: “Pitbull. Phil Mitchell.”)
The working title is rough. Very rough. But the plan is to finish it, send it to Baz, and if he likes it, he’ll release it. “Don’t wait for permission” will definitely be in there, based on Baz’s advice for kids who want to make films: “Don’t wait for permission. You can make a film on an iPhone now. Get with friends and tell stories.”
The quiz: Adam from Bury
Adam from Bury had completed all 214 Wainwrights in the Lake District and visited every country in Europe during a three-month backpacking trip after university. Slovenia was his favourite. He plays along with the quiz every morning over breakfast. He hoped for double figures. He got 13. Not bad for a Monday.
The quiz was particularly strict. “Spell ‘spell’: S-P-E-L-L.” “Name a famous dragon: Puff the Magic Dragon.” There was an R in there. Small one, but the quiz buzzed. “What’s ET short for? Extraterrestrial.” “What sound does a seal make?” Adam did the sound. The quiz said it sounded like he was at a Dave Pearce club night. “Name a type of tea: Earl Grey.” It was a long drawn-out Earl Grey with two errs. The quiz was not happy. They gave him a final chance.
The Wallace and Gromit question: “What is Gromit’s favourite type of cheese?” Adam said cheddar. Wrong. Wensleydale. He hadn’t got into double figures after all — wait, no, he had. 13 points. A good start to Monday.
The birthday game: Kayleigh from Market Bosworth
Kayleigh was turning 35. She makes memory quilts out of kids’ clothes for a living. She’s a massive Mamma Mia! fan. Her plans for the day: eating cake, maybe go for a walk and find a cafe, nothing fancy.
Three spins: Lenny Kravitz Fly Away (1999, his only UK number one so far, skip), Manfred Mann’s The Mighty Quinn (1968, written by Bob Dylan, skip), and finally Kajagoogoo’s Too Shy (1983, their debut single, two weeks at number one, written by Limahl who left the group to go solo after the first album which is a really long story Scott might make a documentary about). Kayleigh was happy. She didn’t regret not staying with Lenny. She had a lovely day ahead.
The handover
Vernon arrived at 9:30. He’d had a very good quiet weekend watching Scotland batter England at rugby, the French dominate at rugby, a little bit of FA Cup, and a lot of Winter Olympics. He was speaking to Hugh Nightingale at 10:10. They played the clip of Hugh’s parents again. Vernon: “The father’s like ‘that’s my son.’ The mother says ‘well actually I think you’ll find it’s our son, because it were my eggs basically.'” Then when nappies get mentioned the fella slides back in. Labi Sifri in the Piano Room from 11. Tomorrow: Asim Chowdhury. Wednesday: Gordon Ramsay live.
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